Forest Ghost (3 page)

‘Does anybody know why they all killed themselves?’

‘I’m not sure. They might have left suicide notes, but if they did, Sally didn’t mention it.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘Are you sure about that? I think Malcolm’s mom could really use our support right now.’

‘Something made him do it and I don’t want to meet that something.’

‘I don’t get you. He committed suicide, Sparks. They all did. It’s not like Jason Voorhees came out of the woods in his hockey mask and killed him.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

They had reached the Nostalgia Restaurant. Jack stopped outside the front entrance to let Sparky out, because his parking space in the back yard was so tight that Sparky wouldn’t have been able to open the Camaro’s door wide enough to lift out his astrological globe.

‘OK,’ said Jack. ‘If you really don’t want to go, I’ll call Sally and tell her we can’t do it. I did warn her that it might be too upsetting for you. Listen – you go inside while I park the car. Are you hungry?’

Sparky shook his head. Jack put his arm around him and hugged him. ‘I’m so sorry, Sparks. I really am. I know how close you were, you and Malcolm.’

Sparky whispered, ‘I told him not to go. I
told
him. He just wouldn’t listen.’

B
y the time Jack had parked his car and squeezed out of it, Sparky had taken his astrological globe up to his bedroom.

‘What is the matter with young Sparky?’ asked Saskia, as Jack came into the restaurant. ‘He just go straight upstairs and he don’t even say hallo.’

‘Looked to
me
like he’d been crying,’ put in Jean.

Jack briefly told them what had happened. Jean pressed her hand against her forehead and then said, ‘Oh,
no
! My friend Ruby – her son Jimmy belongs to that same scout troop. I hope
he
wasn’t one of them!’

‘Why don’t you call her, just to make sure?’ Jack suggested. ‘Go ahead – do it now. You don’t want to spend the rest of the evening worrying about it.’

Jean went to make her phone call while Jack went through to the kitchen. Mikhail’s two sous-chefs had arrived and were busy prepping for the evening. Piotr was furiously chopping up potatoes to make dumplings, while Duane was mixing a thick stuffing of mushrooms, walnuts and horseradish.

Piotr was short and chunky, with buzzcut hair. He had recently come to live in Chicago from Lublin, in Poland, but Duane, a tall young African-American with a bald head and large gold earrings, had lived in Chicago all his life. For some reason, he had a talent for cooking authentic Polish food. Even Jack’s mother said that Duane’s
zrazy
were to die for.

‘What’s Sparky having tonight?’ asked Duane.

‘I don’t know. He’s kind of upset. I’ll tell you why later. Maybe some soup.’

‘The soup tonight is
zhurek
. Otherwise there’s
borsch
, or cherry soup.’

‘Thanks, Duane. Everything OK, Mikhail?’

Mikhail had his back turned but he lifted his hand to show that everything was under control. Jack didn’t say anything about tomatoes.

He went up the narrow back stairs to the three-bedroomed apartment over the restaurant. The apartment was large, with high ceilings, although it was mostly furnished with old-fashioned couches and armchairs which Agnieszka had inherited from her parents, and its heavy brown velvet curtains gave it an Eastern European gloom, like the restaurant below.

He went to Sparky’s bedroom door and knocked. ‘Sparks? You OK? You want anything to eat?’

There was no answer so he opened the door. Sparky was sitting at his desk with the astrological globe in front of him. Through the window, Jack could see the brown brick wall of the building next door. It had a large hoarding on it with a stylized picture of a ram’s head, and the words
Capricorn Hardware
. It had always struck Jack as one of life’s coincidences that Sparky should have an astrological sign staring into his bedroom window, especially since Sparky
was
a Capricorn.

Jack sat down on the end of the bed and watched Sparky turning the globe around and around – occasionally stopping to jot down figures and symbols on a notepad.

‘So what are you doing now?’ he asked.

‘Looking back,’ said Sparky. ‘Trying to find out what happened.’

‘Looking
back
? I thought astrology looked into the future.’

‘Unh-hunh. The stars can show you the past as well. Just because nobody took any notice of their stars at the time, that doesn’t mean that the warnings weren’t there. I looked back at President Kennedy’s stars for November twenty-second, 1963, and if anybody had drawn him a star chart, he would never have driven through Dallas in an open-topped limo. The third degree of Gemini was rising, and the Moon had reached the square of Mercury.’

‘Sparky,’ said Jack, standing up and laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘Maybe you should give this a rest for now. Come down and help me in the restaurant.’

Sparky didn’t turn around and look up at him, but Jack could tell that he was silently crying. ‘No, Dad,’ he said. ‘I have to do this. I want to.’

Jack waited for a while, with his hand still on Sparky’s shoulder. Sparky was wearing a Chicago Bears T-shirt now, and around his neck hung the greenish-blue metal pendant that his late mother always used to wear, in the shape of a large teardrop. The goat on the brick wall opposite stared at him with yellow-eyed malevolence, more like a demon than a goat.

‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘Come down when you feel like it. Duane’s made cherry soup, or
zhurek
, if you’d prefer it.’

He went back downstairs. As he crossed the restaurant, the front door opened and Corinne Cusack walked in.
Oh shit
, he thought.
And I haven’t even called Sally yet, to tell her that Sparky and I won’t be coming to Muskegon
.

‘Jack!’ called Corinne. She was quite tall, nearly as tall as he was, and she had a fashion-model figure, flat-chested but with very long legs, although she always seemed to walk in an uncoordinated way, like a new-born foal. Her long reddish hair was tied back with a gray silk scarf, and she wore a loose gray silk sweater and a black knee-length skirt. Her face was long and narrow, with hooded green eyes. She was wearing no make-up.

‘Corinne,’ said Jack. He came over and embraced her. Underneath her sweater she felt unbelievably thin and bony. ‘I don’t know what to say to you. I’m so sorry for your loss.’

‘He was looking forward to it so much,’ said Corinne. ‘Especially since it meant that he could take a week off school. Do you know what he said to me?’

‘Corinne, please. Why don’t you sit down? Can I get you a drink? A cup of tea, maybe?’

They sat on stools at the bar, Corinne awkwardly crossing her legs. She looked up at all the bottles behind the bar and said, ‘Maybe a vodka-tonic. No ice.’

Henryk the barman hadn’t started his shift yet so Jack poured the drink for her, with Polish vodka, and a Jack Daniel’s for himself. Ordinarily, he didn’t drink alcohol when he was at work, but today was no ordinary day.

‘He said he was going to go to camp like Clark Kent and come back like Superman,’ said Corinne. Her green eyes were sparkling with tears. ‘He was scared to go. I knew he was scared. But he felt so much that he had to prove that he was tough. I think he wanted to prove it to
me
much more than the boys at school. He wanted to prove that he could take care of me.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jack.

Corinne took a tissue out of her pocketbook and wiped her eyes. She took a sip of her vodka-tonic, and then she said, ‘Detective Faulkner asked me if I knew anybody who could come to Owasippe with me. I hope you don’t mind but I said
you
, and Sparky. I couldn’t think of anybody else, and Malcolm and Sparky were such good friends.’

‘Yes, she told me. The only problem is … well, you know that Sparky has Asperger’s?’

Corinne nodded. ‘That was what made it so amazing, that he helped Malcolm so much.’

‘The problem is, Corinne – he doesn’t want to go. It’s irrational, I know, but he thinks that something killed Malcolm and, whatever it is, he’s scared of it. I’m sorry.’

‘I just can’t make sense out of any of this,’ said Corinne. ‘I know Malcolm was being bullied at school, and he was grieving for his dad … but
why
? I was always there for him. And all of those other scouts killed themselves too. Why did they do it?’

‘I really don’t know, Corinne. I’m just sorry that we can’t come with you. I would, myself, but I can’t leave Sparky here on his own. My mother keeps an eye on him, usually, when I have to go away, but she’s in Florida right now, visiting my aunt, and she won’t be back for a couple of days.’

‘It’s OK. I understand. It was presumptuous of me to ask, really. It’s just that I didn’t know who else to turn to.’

Jack said, ‘You have family, don’t you, back in – where was it?’

‘Seattle. Yes. But we never got on too well. Jeff was about the only real friend I ever had.’

She finished her drink while Jack sat and watched her. He didn’t know what else to say to her. She seemed to him to have a conflicting personality, needy but remote – lonely, but wary of allowing anybody too close to her. It could be grief, he guessed, for her recently deceased husband. As his mother had once said to him about his father, you don’t stop loving somebody just because they’re dead.

She climbed off her barstool, in that awkward way of hers, as if she were just about to lose her balance. ‘Thanks, anyhow, Jack. I guess this is something I’ll have to deal with on my own.’

But at that moment, Sparky came down the stairs. He was carrying a sheet of paper and he looked very serious.

‘Sparky!’ said Corinne. ‘Are you all right, sweetheart?’

Sparky walked up to them and said, ‘It’s OK, Mrs Cusack. We’ll come with you to Owasippe.’

‘Sparky?’ said Jack.

‘No,’ said Sparky. ‘We will definitely come with you.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Corinne. ‘Your dad here thought you might get too upset.’

‘We have to come with you,’ said Sparky. ‘It’s important.’

‘What’s that you have there?’ Jack asked him.

Sparky held it up. ‘It’s a star chart. I drew it with Mrs Hausmann’s astrological globe.’

‘Is it for Malcolm?’

‘No, it’s for us. There’s a connection between what happened to Malcolm, and our family. That’s why we have to go to Owasippe.’

‘What connection?’ asked Jack. ‘How can there be a connection?’

Sparky said, ‘I don’t really know yet, but there is. The stars show it clearly.’

‘You’re sure you haven’t made a mistake?’

Sparky shook his head. ‘I’ve done it three times over. It’s always the same. Every time I check today’s date, and the way that Malcolm died, the globe comes up with
our
chart, too. They match exactly.’

Jack looked at Corinne, and shrugged. He could tell by the look on Corinne’s face that she didn’t believe any of this. All the same, she said, ‘I would really like it, if you could come with me, you and your dad.’

‘We have to,’ Sparky repeated.

‘In that case, I’ll call Sally Faulkner, and tell her. Corinne? You want to stay for something to eat? Sparky? You ready for some soup yet?’

Sparky said, ‘That’s all my dad ever does. Tries to force food down people’s throats.’

I
t was warm and sunny when they arrived at Muskegon County Airport, with a soft summer wind blowing and the blue sky streaked with mares’ tails. Altogether there were 51 of them, parents and relatives of the scouts and scout leaders who had died, as well as five police officers from District 24.

Their conversation as they had flown over Lake Michigan had been subdued, barely audible over the sound of the engines, with some of the mothers quietly sobbing. Sparky had said nothing at all, but busily continued to scribble astrological signs in his notebook, as well as lists of figures, and geometric diagrams. He had never once looked out of the window to see the sun shining on the lake like hammered glass.

Sally approached Jack and Corinne and Sparky as they came out of the airport building. ‘So glad you could help out, Jack,’ she said. ‘And you, Sparky.’

Jack thought of telling her that Sparky had insisted on it, and why, but then he decided against it. No matter how strong it appeared to be in Sparky’s star chart, he didn’t think there could really be any astrological connection between Malcolm’s death and the Wallace family. Even if there were, how would it help the police to determine how and why these scouts and their leaders had taken their own lives?

‘There’s a bus here to take you all up to the Owasippe Scout Reservation,’ said Sally. She turned to Corinne and added, ‘We’re so sorry for your loss, Ms Cusack. If there’s anything at all that you need, you have only to ask us.’

In a husky voice, Corinne said, ‘Thank you, Detective.’

It took them a little over 40 minutes to drive north to Owasippe Scout Reservation. Through the tinted windows of the bus, the woods on either side went by like the landscape in a dream. Again, most of the journey passed in silence, with only the occasional sound of a woman’s muted weeping. Outside the reservation buildings, eight or nine squad cars from the Muskegon County Sheriff’s department were parked at all angles, as well as three khaki panel vans from the Medical Examiner’s office and satellite trucks from all of the local TV stations. A flag was flying at half-mast, and flapped in the desultory wind like somebody giving a slow hand-clap.

As the relatives disembarked from the bus, sheriff’s deputies and staff from the Medical Examiner’s office were on hand to direct them through to the main assembly hall. There, the bodies of all those scouts and scout-leaders who had committed suicide were lying on trestle tables, covered with sharply pressed green sheets. The assembly hall was lit by shafts of sunlight, and there were two priests standing in the far corner, one Episcopalian and one Catholic, so it looked more like a church than a morgue. But there was an underlying smell like rotten chicken, which was quite unlike a church, and somebody had obviously tried to mask it with lavender room spray.